NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya will reduce its spending plan for the financial year starting this July by 12% to 3.7 trillion shillings ($28.35 billion), President William Ruto said, part of efforts to attain a balanced budget in the next three years.
The East African nation’s currency and shares have climbed after it successfully issued a new $1.5 billion eurobond in February to finance the partial repurchase of another bond maturing in June. That move came in defiance of widespread expectations that it could struggle to access international markets.
“We are reducing our budget from four point, almost 4.2 trillion (shillings) to 3.7 trillion,” Ruto told Kenyans in Ghana in a video seen by Reuters on Wednesday. “We need to live within our means… we are shedding off fat.”
The president was in Ghana on Tuesday for a state visit.
During a meeting with chief executives of state-owned companies late last month, Ruto said his government wanted to move to a balanced budget within three years.
Kenya has in the past decade been running wide fiscal deficits to fund a range of ambitious infrastructure projects, but the stance nearly backfired when markets started to question the government’s ability to repay the debts.
Apart from cutting spending and reducing the budget deficit, Ruto’s government, which took office in 2022, has also been introducing new taxes, angering some individuals and groups who have challenged the tax measures in court.
($1 = 130.5000 Kenyan shillings)
(Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by George Obulutsa and Bernadette Baum)
